Mark Goltz (Ph.D. ’86) - Visiting Professor in EES

Goltz, now a Professor in the Department of Systems and Engineering Management at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), the Air Force’s graduate school located at Wright Patterson AFB near Dayton, Ohio, spent July through December 2007, his sabbatical year, at Stanford. He received his Ph.D. in the Environmental Engineering and Science program, working with Professor Paul Roberts on modeling the subsurface transport of organic contaminants in the large-scale Borden field experiment. He then returned to Stanford from 1993-1996 to work with Perry McCarty on a successful field test of an in situ technology to bioremediate trichloroethylene (TCE) contaminated groundwater at Edwards AFB by efficiently mixing an electron donor and acceptor into the water to stimulate indigenous bacteria to co-metabolize the TCE. He is currently applying the same technology to mix an electron donor into perchlorate-contaminated groundwater at the Aerojet facility near Sacramento, in order to stimulate perchlorate-reducing bacteria.

While a Visiting Professor here, Goltz interacted with the Luthy and Reinhard research groups. He also collaborated with Professors McCarty and Kitanidis who are editing a monograph on subsurface delivery and mixing. Goltz is contributing a chapter on recirculation systems, partially based on his experiences at the Edwards AFB and Aerojet sites. Also while at Stanford, Goltz began writing a textbook with the goal of using analytical modeling to help teach students how physical, chemical, and biological processes affect the fate and transport of contaminants in groundwater. The text is an extension of Goltz’s dissertation studies with Roberts, and was inspired by discussions he had with another “Paul mole”, Professor Avery Demond, now at the University of Michigan.

During his visit, Goltz presented a hydrogeology seminar describing his most recent work developing a technology to measure hydraulic conductivity and contaminant mass flux in groundwater, averaged over a large subsurface volume, without the need to extract contaminated groundwater to the surface. Mass flux is increasingly recognized as an important parameter that needs to be measured in order to inform decisions at contaminated sites, and the ability to quantify mass flux without the expense of extracting and treating contaminated water represents a significant advance. He also led a discussion of the challenges in groundwater and sediment remediation at a CEE 270 class meeting, and attended the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, where he presented his perchlorate bioremediation work. And when not involved in teaching, writing or research, Goltz took advantage of the wonderful Bay Area weather to train for the New York City Marathon, which he ran (and finished!) in November. His wife, Misuk, accompanied him to Stanford, and both enjoyed their return visit immensely.